High Court Thinking On 1st SOX Whistleblower Case

Law360, New York (November 17, 2013, 11:29 PM EST) -- The outcome of Lawson v. FMR LLC, the first Sarbanes-Oxley Act whistleblower case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, may turn on how the justices resolve a hypothetical posed by Justice Stephen Breyer about a gardener hired to mow the lawn for a publicly traded corporation. At issue in Lawson is whether Congress, by including the words "contractor" and "subcontractor" in the list of entities that cannot retaliate against whistleblowers, meant to extend the SOX whistleblower protections to every business entity that has a contractual relationship...